Bishop of Southern Asia 


INDIA’S MASS 
MOVEMENT 


BY 
FRANK W. WARNE 


BisHop oF SOUTHERN ASIA 


5 


BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS 


OF THE 
METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH 
150 FIFTH AVE., NEW YORK 


Copyright, 1915, by the 
BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS 
_ OF THE 
METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH 
150 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK,N. Y.. 


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PUBLISHED UNDER THE AUSPICES 
OF THE 
BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS 
OF THE 


METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH 


IN COOPERATION WITH THE 


EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 


OF THE 
MASS MOVEMENT COMMISSION 
OF THE 


METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN INDIA 


Chairman 
BrsHop Joun W. Rogsrnson, Bombay 


Vice-Chairmen 
BisHop J. E. Ropinson, Bangalore 
Bisoop Frank W. Warne, Lucknow 


Secretary 
Rev. Brenton T. Bapuey, Lucknow 


Additional Members 
Rev. Dr. Rockwe.ui Cuancy, Delhi 
Rev. Dr. F. R. Freut, Nagpur 
Rev. A. A. Parxer, Baroda 
Miss Lavrnta Livermore, Ghaziabad 
Mrs. Rocxkweiu Criancy, Delhi 


INTRODUCTORY NOTE 


SEND forth this message under a deep con- 
lf viction that I have been providentially 
called to present to our home Church the needs 
of the oppressed but awakening multitudes in 
India, and to call for such prayer and coopera- 
tion that our Church, working in harmony with 
the great sister Churches, may accomplish her 
part in this great movement. 

While writing this pamphlet I have tried to 
think of my relation to the reader as that of a 
guide. I have assumed that the reader, through 
my eyes, will desire to see concerning the Mass 
Movement some of the things that during over 
a quarter of a century of residence in India I 
have heard, read, felt, and seen. If, while 
acting as a guide, I shall succeed in getting my 
readers interested and in love with these masses 
of our fellow beings so cruelly oppressed, as J 
am in love with them, my purpose will have 
been accomplished, and my poor heart will be 
filled with thanksgiving to overflowing. 

The missionaries of the Board of Foreign 
Missions and of the Woman’s Foreign Mission- 
ary Society cooperate so harmoniously in their 
missionary efforts throughout all India, that 
what I shall write will apply equally to the 
work of both societies and no effort will be 
made to treat their work separately. 

FE, Weve 


VII. 


CONTENTS 


Tuer Opportunity OF THE Mass MovEeMENT 


Tue Mass MoveMeEnt’s RELATION TO OTHER 


MWITSSION SL ROBLEMSS Of. Oe8 Cee eecio iets 


How Can THE Home CHuRCcH COOPERATE? 


PAGE 


25 


32 


43 


52 


59 


. WARNE 


FRANK W 


1a 


hop of Southern Asi 


1s 


B 


CHAPTER I 
Tue OprorTuUNIty oF THE Mass MoveMENT 


UR mission in India was founded in 1857 
() by great Christian statesmen. The 
first thirty years of its work succeeded in form- 
ing a community of fewer than ten thousand 
Christians. Now we are baptizing nearly four 
times this number every year and have a Chris- 
tian community of over three hundred thou- 
sand. This phenomenal increase is due to the 
so-called “Mass Movement.” This is marked 
not simply by increasing numbers of in- 
dividuals applying for baptism, but by the 
coming of whole groups, from a score to thou- 
sands, who have together made their decision | 
to accept Christ and who together ask for 
baptism. To understand how this is possible 
one must remember what a strong part group 
life plays in the peculiar social conditions of 
India. ‘Hinduism is built in layers, or “castes,” 
piled one upon another into the thousands. If 
all the lower castes and sub-divisions were in- 
cluded, there would probably be a hundred 
thousand castes in India, no two of which can 
intermarry. Of these castes there are, roughly 
speaking, three great divisions, numbering as 
follows: Brahmans, fifteen million, one twen- 
tieth of India’s total population ; middle castes, 
one hundred and forty-two million, or one 
half; low castes or outcasts, fifty million, or 
one sixth. It is among the sweepers and the 
Chamars, or leather workers, two of the lowest 
among the low castes, the “untouchables,” that 
the Mass Movement is now having its greatest 
effects: It is the small groups of sweepers or 
Chamars, living together with other castes in a 
single village, or the leaders of one of these 
castes in a group of villages, who by deciding 
for Christ together form the units of the Mass 
Movement. 

7 


The first great work in a Mass Movement is 
to get a break into some caste. This comes in 
some places within a few years and in other 
places we work fifteen, twenty, or thirty years 
before the break comes, and in many places it 
has not come yet. In 1905, the missionary in 
one of our districts said to me, “If you will 
come and work with me in my district for a 
month, I believe that we will have a break in 
a hew caste in which we have been working 
for a real break for over twenty-five years.” I 
went, and we made our first camp at a village 
where a great Chaudhri, or village caste leader, 
was believed to be about ready for baptism. 
He came into our tent, prayed with us, declared 
his faith and his willingness to be baptized, and 
we expected every hour to baptize him and 
through his baptism to have a great movement 
begin. On the third day, however, he said, “I 
must go to a wedding.” Our hearts sank, for 
we knew that all the powers of his caste would 
be brought to bear upon him to prevent his 
being baptized—but we were helpless. On 
the next day he returned from the wedding 
as angry aS a raving demon. He cursed us, 
ordered us out of his village and organized a 
caste campaign against us, and went every- 
where ahead of us, and at the close of a month’s 
hard work, as a climax to the work of twenty- 
five years, we had had only one baptism. Six 
years later, however, in 1911, this very man 
sent for me to come and baptize him. I went 
and did so and he has become a great spiritual 
force and is now an unpaid leader in a Mass 
Movement among his caste people. 

Thus formerly before a mass movement began 
there were usually years of seed sowing, 
through the medium of village Sunday schools, 
bazaar preaching, personal visitation, distribu- 
tion of Christian literature, magic lantern 
slides portraying Bible scenes and characters, 
and all other possible methods. Since the move- 
ment is taking on a new momentum, it is now 
happening that it breaks out through the work 


8 


of villagers who are Christians and have worked 
among their relatives and the missionary will 
be asked to come and baptize people where 
neither he nor any employee of the Mission 
has ever been. In such cases we find prejudices 
gone and the way open for Christian teaching 
and baptism follows in a much shorter time. 

Before we receive by baptism one of these 
groups, we require that certain conditions be 
met. All heathen shrines in the mohalla, or 
caste ward, have to be torn down by the people 
themselves and every symbol of idolatry de- 
stroyed before we baptize anyone. Every 
chutia—the tuft of hair left long on the crown 
of the head by means of which the soul is be- 
lieved to be drawn from the body after death, 
and which is an ever present symbol of Hindu- 
ism—is cut off, and every charm and every 
symbol of idolatrous worship on the necks and. 
arms of the women and children are removed 
before baptism. The chaudhries are required 
to promise for the mohalla, and each individual 
for himself, that heathen shrines will not be 
rebuilt in their mohalla, and that there will be 
in it no more heathen rites of worship. Each 
individual is definitely asked before receiving 
baptism, “Do you cheerfully accept baptism and 
promise to obey and receive Jesus Christ as 
your Saviour?” Each one professes to have 
accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Saviour. 
Each individual is asked, “Are you willing to 
suffer persecution?” And all clearly under- 
stand that persecution is inevitable. They an- 
swer, “Yes, I wiil endure persecution.” Each 
one is asked, “Will you give to the support of 
the work of sending the gospel to others?” and 
an affirmative answer is given. No one is 
baptized who has more than one wife. 

The amount which they are required to know 
concerning Christian teaching before baptism 
varies. To have simple villagers’ memorize be- 
fore baptism the Ten Commandments, the 
Lord’s Prayer, and the Apostles’ Creed, we have 
always had as an ideal, but we have found ihe 

9 


very difficult to attain. Yet we hold to the idea 
of their being acquainted with that teaching 
and also having a knowledge of the story of 
Christ’s life, with particular reference to His 
incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and 
ascension and the out-pouring of the Holy 
Spirit, and when they know enough about these 
things to be prepared to comply with the condi- 
tions, we consider them suitable candidates for 
baptism. 

The difficulty of reaching our ideals of Chris- 
tian training before baptism may be happily 
illustrated by the experience of a simple old 
woman who lived in one of the hundreds of 
Indian villages. She had never had any idea 
of God except what she had gained from the 
idolatrous teachings and practices which were 
all about her. She had never committed any- 
thing to memory in all her life, and the one 
thought of her life was to work hours enough 
to keep from starvation. Our Christian cate- 
chist had come to her village and at night when 
the work of the day was over had taught the 
people the Lord’s Prayer. She had listened to 
the explanations and after much effort she had 
committed to memory the first clause, “Ai 
hamare Bap jo asman per hai” (Our Father 
who art in heaven). It had opened to her an 
entirely new world of thought and imagination 
~ and hope, and had satisfied her hungry heart. 
She had heard the explanations, and now, in- 
stead of going to a dead idol, she prayed to 
a living, loving God, who was her Father—a 
Father who had so loved her that He had sent 
His only Son who had died for her and was 
risen and had gone back to heaven to prepare 
a place for her, and would come again and 
receive her unto Himself. What more did she 
want? It had satisfied all her longings for this 
life and the next, and in the newness and fresh- 
ness of these great and wonderful truths the 
poor old soul was having in her humble village | 
a heaven on earth. 

“Our Father who art in heaven” was all she 

10 


could recite before the catechist, but when he 
pressed her to go on and learn the next clause, 
“Hallowed be thy name,” she took no interest. 
When pressed hard, out of the simplicity of her 
new faith and the joy of her heart, she an- 
swered, “Iya zarurat hai?” that is, “What is 
the necessity? What more do I want?” A 
Father in heaven for a poor village woman, a 
home in heaven where there will be no want nor 
tears nor pain forever—“What is the necessity 
of my learning more?” Time and eternity were 
all provided for in these few words, “Ai hamare 
Bap jo asman per hai.” 

Do you ask what are the intellectual and 
spiritual possibilities of these low illiterate out- 
castes? What contribution will they make to 
the Kingdom of God? 

Lord Curzon, in giving his vice-regal vale- 
dictory to India, bore a definite testimony to 
this people’s place in the nation’s life. “My 
eye,” he said, “has always rested upon a larger 
canvas, crowded with untold numbers, the real 
people of India, and distinct from any class or 
section of the people. It is the Indian poor, 
the Indian peasant, the patient, humble, silent 
millions, the eighty per cent who subsist on 
agriculture. He is the bone and sinew of the 
country; by the sweat of his brow the soil is 
tilled. He should be the first and final object 
of every viceroy’s regard. He is the man we 
desire to lift in the world, to rescue from 
tyranny and oppression.” To this testimony 
add that of the Hon. Mr. C. K. Gokkale, a noted’ 
and influential Indian publicist: “I think all 
fair-minded persons,” said he at a public meet- 
ing in Dharwar in 1903, “will have to admit 
that it is absolutely monstrous that a class of 
human beings with bodies similar to our own, 
with brains that can think and with hearts that 
ean feel, should be perpetually condemned to 
a low life of utter wretchedness, servitude, and 
mental and moral degradation, and that per- 
manent barriers should be placed in their way, 
so that it should be impossible for them ever 

11 


to overcome them and improve their lot. This 
is deeply revolting to our sense of justice.” 

A story is told of the widely known Miss 
Lilavati Singh, a Brahman convert and a col- 
lege professor. She went to a conference and 
heard an Indian preacher of fine presence 
preach a great sermon—our Indian preachers 
can preach—and, walking home from the serv- 
ice, Miss Singh remarked: “Blood counts; the 
Brahmans can do it.” She was much surprised 
when told that the preacher whom she had 
heard had come up from the lowest of castes. 
This illustrates very clearly what Christianity 
is doing for India’s “untouchables.” Do you 
wonder that missionaries who see and feel, re- 
joice and get enthusiastic over such a work and 
cry out for help to keep up with the pillar of 
“cloud and fire” ? 

Dr. Buck, our senior missionary, who has had 
over forty years of experience among them, 
says: “They have mental caliber that compares 
very favorably with that of their neighbors 
who are higher in the social scale. Many of 
them have become able spiritual leaders and 
strong gospel preachers. With the advantages 
that higher castes enjoy, they would not be 
their inferiors.” An American judge was sit- 
ting by my side on the platform during an 
Indian District Conference session, most of 
whose members had been elevated to that posi- 
tion from the lower castes, and he put the name 
of some minister of his American acquaintance 
on almost every member of the Conference, be- 
cause of resemblance. The richest treasures of 
the West are those received from the life of the 
peerless One, who lived, died, and rose again 
on the western part of the Asiatic Continent. 
As missionaries we feel that we are but bring- 
ing back to India’s oppressed millions the 
gospel we received from Asia. Therefore, when 
we see that, in the absence of that gospel, a 
so-called religion has branded unnumbered 
millions of India’s sons through weary cen- 
turies as “untouchables,” and has kept them so 

12 


- apart that one of them could no more build his 
little hut near caste people than a pig could 
live in a parlor, our hearts thrill with the confi- 
dent hope that the gospel, through the Mass 
Movement, will yet for India’s “untouchable” 
millions make true the lines of Robert Burns: 


It’s coming yet, for a’ that; 

That man to man, the world o’er, 
Shall brothers be for a’ that, 

For a’ that, and a’ that. 


Missionaries soon learn that it is the deepest 
spiritual truths that specially appeal to the 
Indian mind. There is that element in the 
truths of the gospel, which will fascinate and 
grip the hearts of the people of India. When 
the day comes that India has received Christ, 
with such a soil and with such Divine seed 
we may expect to see Indian lives of such 
beauty and fragrance, and fruit of such rare 
excellence, as have never been seen in any land 
or among any people. Only Christ and the 
deepest spiritual experiences of the Christian 
religion will satisfy awakened India. The 
author of a recent discriminating book on the 
characteristics of various peoples, after writ- 
ing of Japan, China, and other countries, begins 
with India thus: “If I were writing of any 
other country but India, I might write last of 
the religion the people profess, but, since it is 
India, it is the first thing to be considered. 
Religion is the supreme fact of Indian life— 
certainly nowhere else on earth is there a coun- 
try where the entire life of the people is molded 
by their spiritual belief.” 

Dr. Gamewell, of China, recently visited 
India and spoke of the characteristic things 
in which he considered the Chinese superior to. 
the Indian, but added, “One at once in India 
feels that he is in a religious atmosphere not 
to be found in China or Japan. It is in evidence 
everywhere.” Mr. Sherwood Eddy in compar- 
ing the Indian mind with other Oriental minds 
has said, “On the purely intellectual plane the 

13 


Indian mind is more subtle, more philosophical, 
speculative, and profound than the Chinese. 
On the spiritual plane India stands unrivaled. 
China has never produced the religious philoso- 
phies of India, the asceticism of Buddha or the 
Brahmans, the reverence and worship of the 
Hindu, nor the overwhelming consciousness of 
the Divine, which has ever possessed the Indian 
mind, and which is its chief treasure, and its 
greatest possible contribution to the world. 
India’s message will be spiritual.” 

These spiritual characteristics apply to the 
lower castes as well as to the higher. It often 
occurs that when a child is sick, the parents 
vow that if it recovers they will dedicate it to 
the temple. Years afterward the family take 
a long pilgrimage to fulfill the vow and leave 
the child at the temple. Frequently devotees 
will vow that they will hold up an arm for a 
certain number of years, and, in spite of the 
agony, they keep this vow until the arm withers. 
Others will make a vow that they will measure 
their length to Puri, a sacred place of the 
Hindus, and eat only what they can beg. In 
keeping their vows, multitudes die from starva- 
tion, but the vowing and dying go on from 
century to century. Their national trait of 
keeping religious vows explains why so few 
of the hundreds of thousands who have been 
baptized and have taken the baptismal vow have 
gone back to Hinduism. Indian villagers, ac- 
cording to my experience, with childlike faith 
accept the great doctrines of the incarnation, 
atonement, resurrection, ascension, and the out- 
pouring of the Holy Spirit, and nothing wins 
and moves them like the story of Christ’s suffer- 
ings on the cross. After a sermon on that sub- 
ject I saw a whole congregation with bowed 
heads remain long in silence and then break 
out and continue for half an hour in praise and 
prayer, and then receive a marvelous infilling 
of the Holy Spirit. 

During the last cold season, a prominent lay- 
man of another denomination visited India and 

14 


was induced to turn away from the beaten track 
of the tourist to visit our Northwest India 
Conference session and to study our methods. 
He also visited, with one of our missionaries, 
some villages and investigated the movement 
at first hand, witnessing the baptism of com- 
munities among the depressed classes, and gave 
as his judgment concerning mass movements, 
after careful study during the Conference ses- 
sion and in the villages: “I believe that you 
in the Mass Movement in India have begun at 
the right place. Undermine and you will get 
the whole hill.” In the phrase “you will get 
the whole hill” he aptly expresses what in the 
opinion of the missionaries who are leading in 
the Mass Movement will be the final outcome. 
While the present movement is among a class 
composed of 50,000,000 souls, a little above them 
inthe social scale are the great middle class, 
numbering 142,000,000, the “voiceless millions,” 
in whose hands is the future of the Indian Em- 
pire, who are now being mightily influenced and 
among whom, in some places, mass movements 
have already. begun and among whom it would 
seem that the next great mass movement will 
occur. Above these are the higher castes, 
among whom educational, zenana, and other 
missionaries and .agencies are preparing the 
way of the Lord. When the time comes (and 
come it will) that the power now working 
mightily at both the top and the bottom of 
India’s social structure shall permeate the 
whole, if we all work together not in the energy 
of the flesh but in the power of the Spirit, we 
may confidently expect a movement not on a 
human but on a Divine scale. The possibilities 
involved are so overwhelming and the outlook 
so hopeful that I cry out for the prayers and the 
cooperation of the whole Christian world. 


15 


BISHOP FRANK W. WARNE AND A VILLAGE CHAUDHRI 
(HEAD MAN OF CASTE GROUP) 


This man as a volunteer layman led over a thousand people to Christ 


CHAPTER II 
THE CHAUDHRI MovEMENT 


i ‘ EATHENISM has scarcely produced an 

invention in thousands of years, and so 
for the cultivation of the soil the people have 
neither modern machinery nor modern methods. 
Their plows are exceedingly primitive; they cut 
‘their grain with a sickle and carry it to the 
threshing floor on their heads. It is tramped 
out by oxen or beaten out with a flail, as in the 
days of Abraham. 

Several years ago I was in the home of one 
of our local preachers, whose salary was five 
dollars a month. One morning he said to me, 
“Come around behind my house. I want to 
show you something.” He opened a little door, 
the only opening into a little, mud-walled hut. 
He asked, “Can you see anything?” I peered 
through the dim light and said, “I can see a 
pile of mud in the corner.” He replied, “That 
is what I want you to see,” and bending down, 
he pulled out a little drawer and out jumped 
a brood of real chickens. He stooped and pulled 
out a lower drawer and out jumped another 
brood of chickens. Then I learned that he had 
taken an empty five gallon Standard Oil can 
and had cut it so as to put in two drawers. He 
had packed it with mud, so as to retain the 
heat, had put a thermometer on the top, had 
made a little piece of tin to project under each 
drawer and under that had placed a simple 
village light and the tin had carried just suffi- 
cient heat under each drawer to hatch the eggs. 
In short, out there in the villages, where non- 
Christians had not made an invention since the 
days of Abraham, this man invented a first- 
class incubator. I became so enthusiastic over 
it that I said, “If you will let me, I will pay 
the expenses and have your _ incubator 
patented.” “O, no, you won't,” he replied. “I 

1B 


have lain awake nights, thinking this out to 
he:p my poor Christians to make a living. If 
it is patented, the Hindus and Mohammedans 
will get it.” It was not patented. 

Let me tell you something more about this 
man. He had several years before been dis- 
missed from mission service as useless. Then 
he came into one of our meetings, where we 
have had such marvelous outpourings of the 
Holy Spirit, and he became filled with the 
Spirit and was set on fire for service. His story 
tells the secret of our Mass Movement. It is 
only in power where we have Spirit-filled In- 
dian leaders. 

Next, this man thought through the social 
conditions of Indian village life—that in each 
caste community in each village there is a head 
man or leader. In the Hindustani speaking 
country that man is called a Chaudhri. This 
man in a new sense led us into what we call 
our Chaudhri Movement in the following 
manner : 

He selected the Chaudhrion ka Chaudhri, or 
the highest Chaudhri in that part of the coun- 
try in one of the lower castes. He made him 
his friend and then took him into the jungle, 
so that his people would not see him talking 
long with a Christian. The two men remained 
there alone for hours and the preacher explained 
Christianity to the Chaudhri. He said, “Go 
home and think of this for two weeks and let 
us meet here again.”’ When they met two weeks 
later, the preacher answered the Chaudhri’s dif- 
ficulties and gave him instruction and sent him 
home to think it all over for another two weeks. 
When they met the third time alone in the 
jungle, the preacher prayed and the Chaudhri 
received just such an infilling of the Holy Spirit 
as the preacher had received and became on fire 
to save his people. The preacher said, “Go and 
tell all about this to your Chaudhri friends and 
bring as many of them as you can two weeks 
later to meet me here.” At this meeting there 
were ten Chaudhries and some were converted. 

18 


In ways like this we were drawn into what we 
call our Chaudhri or village leaders work, 
which is the most hopeful feature in the whole 
Mass Movement. 

Two years later this voluntary movement 
had grown to such proportions that in that dis- 
trict it was decided to have a summer school 
for Chaudhries. About sixty were expected, 
but over two hundred came and they remained 
six days. 

There were about fifty villages, in which in 
that short time through this movement we had 
Christians, and a Christian community of eight 
thousand and from ten to twelve thousand non- 
Christians, who were asking instruction pre- 
paratory to baptism and were ready to become 
Christians. The work of the Chaudhri summer 
school followed three lines: first, the instruction 
of the Chaudhries in the Scriptures; second, 
the deepening of their spiritual life; third, the 
discussion of village problems. The Scriptural 
instruction centered for the full six days 
around the four great events in the life of Christ 
—His incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, 
and ascension. The Chaudhries learned the 
great central truths concerning. these four 
supreme events in the life of Christ. The story 
of His birth included the story of the star, the 
wise men, the shepherds, and the angels with 
the announcement of glad tidings of great joy 
for all people, and the saving of the life of the 
Christ-child at two years of age. After a 
Chaudhri had learned the story, he would rise 
and tell to the other Chaudhries about the wise 
men and the star, and the manger, and the 
angels, all with an Oriental touch. I am frank 
to confess that I got an entirely new view of 
these incidents in the birth of our Lord. It 
was made so real to them that those two hun- 
dred Chaudhries will be able to tell it in the 
villages for the rest of their lives. The story 
of the crucifixion was told so vividly by the 
Chaudhries, after they had learned it, that the 
audience would sway, and moan, and weep, and 

19 


ery out, “It was all because of our sin,” and it 
made a life-long impression on each one. It 
will be told and retold throughout the villages 
for many a day to come. The resurrection and 
the ascension to them had all the freshness of 
the new and the miraculous; it lived to them 
and was real, and, when they would describe 
Christ as going back to God and being received 
up into heaven, it meant to them life and power 
and victory, and they would say that they were 
ready to die for Him who gave His life for them, 
and was now alive and able to take them to 
heaven. 

The religions of India have been kept alive 
by this story telling method and so we have 
adopted it in our Christian teaching. These 
men went out from this summer school, to tell 
and retell these stories about Jesus in the vil- 
lages. This represented only one district; it 
is being repeated in many of the districts. Thus 
by the story telling and the singing of stirring 
hymns the gospel is spreading in India. It is 
because of the work of these Chaudhries that 
we have 150,000 who have given up idolatry and 
are waiting to be baptized. 

I was one day going out with the preacher of 
whom I have spoken, and was waiting by the 
road for an ekka, a two-wheeled Indian con- 
veyance without springs, on the top of which 
one sits on a flat board. I said to the preacher, 
as we waited, “Most of these Chaudhries can- 
not read. Why do you get so enthusiastic over 
them? What can they do anyway?” He with 
Oriental powers of illustration did not answer 
me directly, but turned to an Indian carpenter, 
sitting on the ground near by, making a cart- 
wheel with his simple tools, and he asked the 
carpenter, “Did you go out into the jungle and 
cut down the tree from which the wood came, 
saw it up, dry it, and carry it in here?” “No, 
no,” said the carpenter. ‘Untrained men did 
that—I am a trained carpenter.” Then the 
preacher turned to me and said, “That is what 
the Chaudhries do; they go out into the jungles 

20 


of Hinduism and tell the stories about Jesus 
and bring the people to you ready to be made, 
shaped, or trained into Christians.” Here is 
where we are breaking down—for the lack of 
trained workers, who can take up the work 
where the Chaudhries have to leave it. 

The third purpose of the school was to dis- 
cuss village problems. This centered around 
idolatry in the villages and this again around 
the three occurrences in village life most closely 
connected with idolatrous customs, birth, mar- 
riage, and death. 

After six days of Bible study, of instruction 
in singing Christian hymns, and discussion of 
their village problems, these two hundred men 
banded themselves together as voluntary work- 
ers, to go forth to make their people not only 
Christians in name, but true Christians, and in 
the following manner: . 

First, they made together a covenant that 
they would begin in their own lives and homes, 
that they would put all idolatrous customs out 
of their own homes at the time of births, mar- 
riages, and deaths. Think of what that will 
mean, to have two hundred leaders thus banded 
together! Second, they covenanted that they 
would use their full influence to get rid of idols 
in their mohallas and communities. 

As to methods, they decided, first of all, to 
unite in an endeavor to get all the people of 
their caste to become Christians in every mo- 
halla in which there were any Christians. This 
will mark a very great advance. Further, they 
clearly saw that, so long as the community was 
divided and marriage contracts were formed 
between children of Christian and non-Chris- 
tian families, it would be impossible to get rid 
of idolatrous customs. Upon this they were 
greatly perplexed and finally after hours of 
discussion two men rose at the same time and 
from opposite sides of the congregation issued 
this challenge: 

“Sahib, there will always be these tempta- 
tions. And some of the weak ones are sure to 

21 


fall into these temptations as long as there are 
idolaters living in our houses and mohallas and 
even in the neighboring village, where are our 
relatives. But we can get rid of this temptation 
by winning to Christ the other people who live 
in our houses and mohallas and our relatives 
in the neighboring villages, and we will go home 
and begin a campaign to win to Him all the 
people in our village and the neighboring vil- 
lages who are of the caste from which we were 
converted, if you will give us preachers and 
teachers to care for them.” 

Is not this the greatest challenge the Chris- 
tian Church has received in this generation— 
perhaps ever? It involves a large financial out- 
lay on the part of the Church at home, and 
prayer on both sides of the ocean, but who 
would dare to tell these people that we could 
not meet them in this challenge, and that it was 
therefore useless for them to make the attempt? 

The training of the Chaudhries means more, 
however, than the multiplication of workers to 
spread the Gospel. They are not only mission- 
aries to their own people but leaders of the 
Christian life of their own communities. Upon 
them is being put the responsibility for the 
maintenance of Christianity in their own mo- 
hallas or villages. Our native workers have 
discovered that the organization characteristic 
of Methodism was a marked factor in our gen- 
eral success. It occurred to me that we had not 
put that organization into the villages. Of 
course, the exact Disciplinary method would 
not meet the situation. How could we train 
the Chaudhries to carry on the government and 
work of the Church? To provide for this we 
prepared a set of questions to be used by the 
visiting Hindustani preacher as he goes among 
the villages. He gathers the Chaudhries and 
other leading people together in a _ business 
meeting in which he asks these questions. The 
local leaders thus feel that the responsibility 
is laid upon them for the character of the com- 
munity’s Christianity. In this way a responsi- 

22 , s 


bility which formerly rested on a force of paid 
workers alone now is extended to an ever in- 
creasing group of unpaid workers. Before 
this practice began we had many groups of 
Christians in the villages. Now we are build- 
ing up a permanent Church. The questions are 
formulated as follows 


A Monthly Business Meeting with the Chau- 
dhries or other Village Leaders. 


I. Numerical strength of the Church. 


1. How many Christian families are in 
this mohalla or village? What is the 
total number of Christians? Who 
have come? Who have gone? 

2. How many in this mohalla are yet un- 
baptized? Among the PINVISUE AT 
Among the non-Christians? 


II. Domestic and Social Conditions. 


1. How many births in Christian families? 

2. Is there any intazam (arrangement 
being made for a wedding)? Are you 
trying to make it a Christian mar- 
riage? 

3. Who are reported to iE been married ? 
Who married them? 

4, Are there any sick? What are you 
doing for them? 

5. Who have died? Did they receive 
Christian burial? 

6. Is there any but parasti (idolatry) or 
other un-Christian conduct? Have 
you any thans (shrines) ? Do you con- 
sult or help non-Christian priests? 
Do you have feasts for the dead? Is 
there any gambling, drinking, taking 
part in non-Christian festivals? 


III. Spiritual Conditions. 
1. Do you have mohalla prayers daily? 

2. How many do not keep the fourth com- 

mandment ? 


{ 


23 


3. How many men, women, and children, 
do not attend Sunday service? 

4, What children are to be received into 
the Probationer’s Class? 

o. What probationers are receiving prepa- 
ration for Full Membership? 

6. Who are ready for receiving into Full 
Membership ? 

7. Have you a Sunday School in your mo- 
halla? 

8. How many know the Ten Command- 
ments, Lord’s Prayer, Life of Christ 
and Bible stories? 

9. What are you doing to spread the knowl- 
edge of Christ? 


IV. Pastoral Support. 
1. How much was given last month for the 
support of the pastor? 
2. How much will you give for the pastor’s 


support this month? In eggs........ 
animals...... OPAliis eee Casi’ eae 
miscellaneous...... ? 


3. Do you all use the vessel of blessing? 
4. Do all give something? 


V. Miscellaneous. 


1. What are you doing for the education of 
your children? 

2. The reports of leaders. 

3. When and where will we meet next 
month ? 

4, Any other business? 


With methods so simple and so characteristic 
of the land, what can prevent the spread of a 
strong and living Church in the Indian Em- 
pire, save a failure to provide the trained 
teachers and leaders to guide the minds and 
hearts of the coming multitudes! 


24 


CHAPTER III 
Tue INNER SOURCES OF THE MOVEMENT’S PowErR 


st ROM first to last this task—the making 

KF of Christ known to all men—is a su- 
perhuman work. Every other consideration 
and plan and emphasis is secondary to that of 
wielding the forces of prayer.”—World Mis- 
Sionary Conference. 

Years before this report was given in Edin- 
burgh our Indian Church had learned this les- 
son. The magnitude of the opportunities and 
the desperateness of the opposition had driven 
our people to their knees. In the Meerut Dis- 
trict, in which there have been, including parts 
later going into other districts, over fifty 
thousand baptisms, there has been a daily cove- 
nant of prayer among the workers for over 
twelve years. They daily pray for one another, 
for the people who are becoming Christians, 
and for openings among the higher castes. 
Practically all our missionaries of both soci- 
eties, and all our Indian ministers keep the 
Morning Watch. They read and pray and med- 
itate every morning until they have received 
the message for the day from the Book of Life. 
Herein is one of the greatest sources of power 
in our Indian Mass Movement. I have been 
sending annual letters for years to Christian 
papers in England and America, asking for 
prayer that God’s Spirit be poured out upon» 
the Chamars, and God has answered until they 
are turning to Christ in such numbers that we 
have not workers to shepherd them. 

Then began our great revival in the year 
1905. Our people came to us, asking what they 
could do to save the lost about them. We said 
to them, “Take your Bibles and begin studying 
from the fourteenth chapter of St. John’s 
Gospel through to the end. Study with care 
Christ’s promises as to what should be accom- 

25 


plished after His ascension through the out- 
pouring of the Holy Spirit upon His followers. 
Then study the Acts of the Apostles, as illus- 
trating what happened.” -Shortly they began to 
come back to us and say, “We understand now 
that we are like the early Christians, a little 
company in the heart of the non-Christian 
world. We have learned what Jesus taught 
His early followers to do, and we are going to 
do likewise.” And so they began to form them- 
selves into praying groups and praying bands, 
and I learned much that was new about pray- 
ing. We circulated widely a little prayer 
ecard, which read: 


“Will you make this your 
DAILY PRAYER 
until the answer comes? 
O LORD, send a Revival, and begin 
in me, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.” 


That prayer would not do any harm in any 
church at home, would it? 

Our people began to pray with great earnest- 
ness and the first revivals came in our board- 
ing schools for boys and for girls. They would 
often pray most of the night, putting together 
the two words in the Lord’s final command, 
“TARRY”—“UNTIL,” and it repeatedly hap- 
pened that past midnight the Holy Spirit would 
fall upon them, as upon the Church at the 
beginning, and they would be filled with joy 
unspeakable, and with power and marvelous 
enthusiasm. They were largely the sons and 
daughters of our leading preachers and laymen, 
and on the next day many letters would leave 
the schools, running somewhat as follows: 


“Dear Father and Mother and Brothers 
and Sisters at home: 
“Last night while we were all praying, 
I received such an infilling of the Holy 
Spirit and fullness of joy as is too wonder- 
ful to express. I am filled with the blessed 
Holy Spirit, and now I am going to spend 
26 


most of to-night praying that such a bless- 
ing as came to me last night will come to 
the dear people at home. 
“Your loving 
“Son or daughter.” 


When these letters would reach the home, the 
_father and mother reading them would come un- 
der conviction, burst into tears, and, falling 
upon their faces, begin to pray. Letters of this 
kind so widely reached our people that, almost 
before we knew it, we had a great revival in the 
homes of the leading preachers and workers all 
through our mission, and then it reached our 
village Christians. Thus it has gone on with 
increasing power from 1905 until now, 1915, and 
the secret of the Movement, as*I understand it, 
is our Indian slogan, “PRAYER FIRST.” 

Another explanation of the revival is the 
telling of the Story of the Cross. The religions 
of India have been perpetuated through the 
centuries by story telling. After the day’s 
work, the people gather around the little village 
court and a story teller narrates the story of 
their gods, and thus the people come to under- 
stand their religion. We have adopted that 
method in connection with Christian missions. 

To illustrate what I mean, I will tell you 
a story. It was told to me by a missionary of 
the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society. So- 
cial conditions are such in India that unmar- 
ried Indian women cannot safely go about in the 
villages, and so it comes to pass that the great 
majority of the Bible women of the Woman's 
Foreign Missionary Society are the wives of 
our Indian ministers. In order that they may 
continue to study and advance, and keep ahead 
of the Christian community, it is the custom to 
give these Bible women annual examinations. 
Miss Livermore told me that once when she 
was conducting such examinations, sitting on 
the floor of a church in front of the pulpit, a 
simple village woman appeared for examina- 
tion. 

27 


“T took out a large piece of brown paper 
and a big pencil and passed it to this wom- 
an, to have her begin a written examina- 
tion, but, when the poor woman saw the 
brown paper and the pencil, her chin began 
to quiver and the tears rolled down her 
cheeks, and she said, ‘Miss Sahib, my hus- 
band only gets four dollars a month; we 
have a family of four children and three of 
them have been sick most of the year, and 
I have had to take care of them and have 
had such a struggle for existence that I 
have been unable to prepare for this 
examination, and I cannot take it,’ and the 
poor woman broke down and wept. I 
was so sorry for her that I would try 
in some other way to find out what she 
knew, and so I said to her, ‘Tell me a Bible 
story. Her face at once brightened and 
she started to tell the story of Jesus. She 
began at the incarnation, the birth of the 
Divine Babe, and described how the heavy- 
ens opened above and the angels came 
down, and through them all heaven ac- 
knowledged that the Babe was heaven’s 
King. Then the stars came and the starry 
heavens acknowledged Him as King. Then 
the shepherds came, as representing the la- 
boring millions, to acknowledge Jesus as 
their King. Then the wise men came, as a 
prophecy that the wise men in all time 
would come and worship Him as King. 
When she got through, I had learned 
much about the incarnation. Finally we 
came to the story of the crucifixion, in 
~which the poor woman described the cruel- 
ties and injustice of the trial, and the 
scourging which Jesus, with tied hands and 
bended form, received upon the back from 
the great, muscular, cruel Roman soldiers, 
until His royal flesh and blood rolled to- 
gether upon the ground. Then she de- 
scribed Him as fainting under the cross, 
and, reaching at last the place of the cru- 

28 


cifixion, she told how He was disrobed and 
stretched upon the cross, how His left hand 
was stretched out upon the arm of the 
cross, and a great Roman soldier put his 
knee upon his wrist, another holding a 
spike over His hand, and a third with a 
great mallet pounded it, blow upon blow, 
until the royal, holy hand of Jesus was 
pierced, torn, bruised, and fastened to the 
accursed cross. Then the poor woman 
began to tell how the right hand was nailed 
to the other arm of the cross, when sud- 
denly her emotions overcame her, and she 
wept aloud and threw her arms around 
my neck and said amid her sobs, ‘I cannot 
finish this story if I never pass my exam- 
ination; it will break my heart, it will 
break my heart.’ ” 


Then the cultured college woman of the West 
and the simple village woman of the East threw 
their arms around each other and wept in heart 
union, joy, and thanksgiving for the wonderful 
manifestation of the Divine love that had 
brought salvation and sympathy and union 
and sisterhood in Christ Jesus to both their 
hearts. As I was told this story, I thought of 
the oft quoted words: 


“Oh, East is East, and West is West, 
And never the twain shall meet.” 


I felt like saying, “Those who say that leave 
out the Story of the Cross, for here East and 
West have met, and they will continue to 
meet.” 


“For Christ is Christ; and rest is rest, 
And love true love must greet, 

In East and West hearts crave for rest 
And so the twain must meet, 

The East still East, the West still West, 
At Christ’s nailed, pierced feet.” 


As I was once up in the mountains and pass- 
ing one of the temples underneath the eternal 
29 i 


snows, the temple priest came out and asked 
who I was, and what I was doing. I told him 
that I was a missionary, and we sat together 
under a tree and I explained to him missionary 
work, and, having learned from the Hindustani 
people what stirs the heart of the Indian, I 
finished by telling the Story of the Cross. I 
told him that there were Indians great enough 
to love their own nation, but Jesus was great 
enough to love the world—there were other peo- 
ple great enough to love their friends, but 
Jesus was great enough to love His enemies, 
and then described how while His left hand 
was being nailed to the cross, with the right 
hand pleadingly raised toward His Heavenly 
Father, He was praying for His enemies who 
were crucifying Him, saying, “Father, forgive 
them! Father, forgive them!’ When I had 
finished, the tears were rolling down the cheeks 
of the old priest, and he paced excitedly back 
and forth in front of me, saying, “I want you 
to leave India! I want‘you to leave India!” 
I said, “Why?” And he replied, “We have no 
story like that in Hinduism, Mohammedanism, 
or Buddhism, or any other religion. If you tell 
that story in India, the people will forsake 
our altars, our priests and sacrifices, and our 
customs, and will follow Jesus.” And that is 
just what is happening, not only in India, but 
in China and Korea and Japan. There is no 
saying that is being more constantly fulfilled 
in mission work than Christ’s own words con- 
cerning the death that He was to die, “And I, 
if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.” 
Thus it is the Story of the Fatherhood of God, 
with a love that gave His Son, and the Son 
with the love that gave Himself, that is winning 
the heart of the Oriental world. The book that 
is selling best in India to-day among the high 
caste, devout, and cultured people is Thomas 
4’ Kempis’s “Imitation of Christ.” 

The question is often asked, “Are the motives 
that prompt the people social and secular, or 
spiritual?” Frankness would require the an- 

30 


swer that they are probably a mixture of all 
three. Even if social and financial motives 
are included, did they not actuate some of the 
Master’s first disciples? Did not James and 
John ask for the chief seats in the Kingdom 
just before our Lord’s crucifixion? Have not 
motives been mixed in all great movements 
and corrected afterward? And is not our 
great responsibility in these movements after- 
ward to increase their spirituality? 

But it is still my firm belief that the ruling 
motive from the first is spiritual. I asked one 
of our best missionaries, working in the very 
heart of the movement and the persecutions, 
“Do you believe in the genuineness of this 
movement, and in its spirituality, and, if so, 
why?” The answer so entirely corresponds 
with my own convictions that I present it. 


“T think I shall give just one point 
which is to me a constant marvel, and that 
is the way in which the Holy Spirit seems 
to work directly in the hearts of these 
people, in a way which is not common 
among educated people, who depend so 
much on books and one another, and on the 
inspiration of sermons and meetings. It 
strikes me that the desire for the education 
of their children and the hope of better so- 
cial position, or any other reason, or com- 
bination of reasons, will not account for 
their being willing to be beaten, to be 
turned out:of their homes, to have their 
work taken from them, to have wells and 
water cut off from them. If they do not 
get something which feeds the heart-hunger 
and ministers to the soul, I am utterly at a 
loss to explain their coming. If the Spirit 
does feed and satisfy them, the whole ex- 
planation is easy. With the large num- 
ber of Christians and inquirers we have so 
few preachers that we cannot give a great 
deal of help—not enough, I think, to ac- 
count for all they endure, but the Holy 

31 


Spirit is not limited by distances, is not 
appalled by numbers, but can minister to 
each one of the thousands, and I believe 
that He does minister and that it is the 
whole secret of India’s great Mass Move- 
ment.” 


Certainly the movement is scriptural. Is 
it not in harmony with the Master’s teach- 
ing and methods? Who could better describe 
the mass movement of India than the Master 
when He read at Nazareth His program for His 
Kingdom—“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 
because he hath anointed me to preach the Gos- 
pel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the 
broken-hearted, to set at liberty them that are 
bruised”? What could better describe these 
poor people than “poor,” “broken-hearted,” 
“captive,” “blind,” “bruised”? And what could 
better meet their needs than “the Gospel,” 
“to heal,” and to receive “deliverance,” “recoy- 
ery,’ and “liberty,” and “to proclaim the ac- 
ceptable year of the Lord”? 


CHAPTER IV 
THe Tests or tHe MoveMentT 


HE Mass Movement has now been going 
on in our Mission in India since 1866, 
but more definitely since 1890 or thereabouts, 
and with much increased momentum since the 
great revival of 1905 and 1906. It has there- 
fore had time to be tested, and one of the many 
tests it has stood is the test of persecution. 
The reasons for this persecution can easily 
be so clearly explained that all can understand 
from what cause they emanate. The Brahmans 
as priests have lived for centuries upon the 
earnings of these depressed millions and there- 
fore cannot stand uninterestedly by and see 
them moving up beyond and out of their power 
to coerce and oppress. The land owners, whose 
32 


slaves they practically are, clearly realize that, 
when these multitudes have become Christians 
and educated, they will assert their manhood 
and individual rights, and will no longer re- 
main absolute serfs, therefore they persecute 
them to frighten them away from Christianity. 
I asked a high British official for his opinion 
of the cause. He instantly replied: “It is sim- 
ply true to human nature that the land owners 
and religous leaders, who have had power over 
these poor people and have oppressed them and 
made money out of their toil through the cen- 
turies, do not want to see them rise.” 

Yet a third and political element has recently 
entered into the persecution. When the British 
Government made provision for elected repre- 
sentatives in the Provincial and Imperial Gov- 
ernments, the Government, to keep the balance 
between the religions, made provision that the 
representation between Mohammedans and 
Hindus should be on the basis of their respec- 
tive populations. In the past the low caste 
people have all been counted as Hindus, and 
Hindu political agitators are violently opposed 
to letting the lower classes cease to be counted 
as Hindus. There is therefore now added to 
the two other causes for persecution a third, 
which is political, and in a number of cases it 
has been more cruel than the other two com- 
bined, but all three parties to the persecution 
combine and persecute together. The British 
Government in India guards the life of its sub- 
jects and any who take life pay the penalty, 
but in a land like India existence can be made 
almost unbearable, while yet the persecution 
falls short of taking life. 

The most common, I might almost say, -the 
universal method of persecution is the closing 
of the village well. I can never forget one vil- 
lage where there was a company of about sev- 
enty Christians. After baptism they had been 
persecuted to such an extent that they had fled 
from their homes. Soon the people in that vil- 
lage were in great difficulty without them and 

33 


went and pleaded with the new converts to re- 
turn and gave them many promises, none of 
which were kept after they returned. I held 
a meeting in their mohalla and a hundred 
vards away I could see the great village well, 
with the people of the other castes drawing 
water. One learns why such a high value was 
put upon a well in Bible times, when one sees 
a great Indian village well one hundred or more 
feet deep. At the close of the meeting the 
Christians threw themselves upon the ground 
with clasped hands in front of me, and cried, 
“Please, please do something to get us water.” 
It was about three o’clock in the afternoon, the 
shimmering heat was terrible, 160 degrees in 
the sun, and yet those poor people, as if to 
tempt them, were close to a great fresh water 
well and, while seeing their neighbors drawing 
and drinking, were refused all fresh water be- 
cause they were Christians. They could only 
get water out of a filthy pond a long distance 
away, and there were yet months of the hottest 
weather ahead before the coming of the rains. 
Nevertheless, not one of those poor Christians 
even suggested the idea of giving up his new 
found faith and hope and joy, though each and 
all were promised water, if they would. \ 

A few months ago four men came a long way, 
from a comparatively new work, to one of our 
missionaries, asking for baptism. He told 
them that they would be fiercely persecuted 
and advised them to go home and consider the 
matter. They did, and returned, bringing with 
them one of their own people who had been 
baptized. He had been beaten until he was all 
bruised and could not use his hands. He sat 
between the other men. The missionary said, 
“You see what has happened to this man and, 
if four more of you from the same village are 
baptized, the persecution will be four-fold more 
severe. Are you prepared to endure four-fold 
persecution?” They replied, “Missionary, this 
man has found God. There is a joy in his life 
unknown in India. If we are beaten, we are 

34 


beaten ; if we die, we die; but what this man has 
found, we must have; we are determined to 
become Christians.” They were baptized. Were 
they “rice Christians” ? / 

“Last week,’ reported one of our mission- 
aries, “I baptized three persons in a village. 
Two days later I was called to go back, and on 
arrival found that the Zemindars, or land own- 
ers, and caste leaders and members of the Arya 
Samaj were so enraged that they had broken 
one man’s arm and beaten him so badly that 
his friends were ashamed to let him be seen. 
They had torn another man’s arm open, and a 
third one had been struck on the side with an 
implement something like a hoe and his side 
was cut open so that, if the cut had been a little 
deeper, he would have been disemboweled. The 
Zemindars in their rage had not waited to know 
how many had been baptized and these men who 
had been beaten had not yet been baptized.” 
When the missionary and the Indian preacher 
arrived on the second occasion, the Zemindars 
appeared on the scene and forbade baptism, and 
stood there with their implements of torture, 
threatening the lower caste people, who were 
practically their slaves. Yet in the face of this 
the heads of three more families came out and 
were publicly baptized. The missionary who 
reported this added two remarks with which 
I have entire sympathy. He said, “I have al- 
ways two thoughts. One, they must have a real 
vision of Jesus Christ, and that I believe to be 
the secret of the movement. The other, I feel 
as though their zeal is greater than mine.” The 
missionary told me this story with tears roll- 
ing down his cheeks and added, “I could fall 
at their feet. I feel ashamed of myself in com- 
parison with them.” 

I have been myself in villages and have seen 
the fury and anger of the Zemindars and 
wealthy people of the village on such occasions, 
until I, though I knew they could not touch me, 
have felt greatly relieved to get out of the vil- 
lage. I saw a man so beaten that his face was 

35 


cut open and he had almost lost an eye, yet 
when I asked, “Are you sorry that you became 
a Christian?” he replied, “No, since I have 
heard what Christ suffered for me and what 
the early Christians suffered, I am willing to 
go to death. But I am not willing to give up 
my faith in Christ. I can only live a little while 
in this world, but in the next world I will live 
in glory forever.” ‘This answer suggests how 
truly these simple Christians get hold of the 
inner spiritual comfort of Christianity. When 
I think of these simple people who have no 
power against these enraged men and must 
suffer persecution after receiving baptism, I 
feel just like the other missionary. I feel 
ashamed in their presence, but admire their 
faith and glory in their devotion and courage. 
Their persecution after a time gradually les- 
sens, when they have been severely tested and 
the land owners come to learn that they work 
much more faithfully and honestly than they 
did before they became Christians. 

The most severe and telling test of the quality 
of the converts sometimes comes from their own 
families. This was the case with a lad named 
Chuttan, whose story Rev. J. T. Robertson of 
Bulandshahr tells. 


“He was only the son of an outcaste 
sweeper, the product of a thousand gen- 
erations of oppression, but somehow he 
had awakened to the possibility that, 
sweeper though he was, it might be possible 
for him to learn and so he began to attend 
school. This school was for Christian 
children of sweeper Christians in Khurja. 
The school meets for two hours daily, 
when the people have leave from work. 
Even the children have to work, so keen is 
the struggle for daily bread. The children 
come up from their scavenger work, eat 
something, and go to school. When the 
{ime is up, they go to work again. Chut- 
tan did as the rest for months. As he was 

36 


a non-Christian boy, no one seemed to know 
much about him except that his parents 
were much opposed to Christianity. This 
went on for over six months, and all the 
while Chuttan was making good progress, 
for one studying under such adverse con- 
ditions. One night, while eating his food, 
he astonished the home by saying, ‘You may 
do as you like with me, but I am going to 
be a Christian.’ Upon hearing this the 
father tried by a severe thrashing to exor- 
cise the evil spirit, for such he verily be- 
lieved had taken possession of his son. 
When a Hindustani parent thrashes for 
such a purpose, he is merciless. This did 
not cast out the spirit, and so they next 
tried starvation. This not working, they 
turned Chuttan out of doors, hoping that 
the consequent suffering would do the 
work. But, as he was a wage earner, even 
if on a small seale, Chuttan went on with 
-his work, eating and sleeping as he could, 
but all the time regularly attending school. 

“After a time this condition of things 
came to the ear of the Indian preacher. 
He told Chuttan that he might sleep in the 
school. (This was one of the few places 
where we have a_ school house.) ‘The 
parents did not relent, and so after many 
months the Padri Sahib baptized Chuttan, 
giving him the name of Charlie Chuttan. 
He was now made a ward of the Christian 
community, which for a sweeper com- 
munity was not poor. In turn each fam- 
ily gave this outcaste son of an outcaste 
his food. As time passed on, his mother’s 
heart, after the wont of mothers’ hearts 
the wide world round, began to relent, and 
she too took him in for food. But so low 
did she deem him to have fallen by becom- 
ing a Christian, that, low caste though 
she was, she gave him his food apart. Time 
wore on and, when she found that being a 
Christian had not made her son one whit 

37 


less lovable, she gave him permission to 
sleep at home. Here by a consistent, loving 
life, he so disarmed opposition, that his 
parents began to study him. So consistent 
was the life he lived, that, before he had 
been living at home a full year, the mo- 
mentous decision was made by the family, 
that, since being a Christian made such 
obedience, they would all become Chris- 
tians. One Sunday night in 1912, when 
I was there, the whole family surprised 
the Christians by coming to church, 
headed by Charlie. The father declared 
their intention of receiving baptism, and 
so they were put under instruction and in 
due time baptized. ‘And a little child shall 
lead them’ was fulfilled before our eyes, 
for Charlie, when he first started Christ- 
ward, was not over thirteen. There are 
thousands of such boys who could be taken 
to a boarding school, if they had a patron.” 


Let me add one more incident of the per- 
secution—a story that illustrates the faithful- 
ness, not simply of the few, but of the thou- 
sands. Just before leaving India I was present 
at a meeting of the missionaries of both our 
missionary societies and the Indian leaders of 
our Indian Christian community of over fifty 
thousand. They told me that there was being 
circulated everywhere among these Christians 
a document on which persecuted Christians 
were being urged to put their thumb marks. 
That is the way in which Indian villagers in 
court and elsewhere attach their signatures to 
petitions and legal documents. I have seen 
petitions with hundreds of thumb marks upon 
them. This document was being circulated by 
the Brahmans and landlords and it promised 
the Christians that if they would deny Christ 
and cease to have the Methodist preachers come 
to their villages and cease to have their children 
go to Sunday School and to day school, and 
would certify to this by putting their thumb 

38 


marks on the document, the persecution would 
stop at once and forever. I asked the mission- 
aries and the Indian preachers who were 
working among the fifty thousand Christians 
whom they represented, “Have you ever heard 
of even one of our Christians who had put his 
thumb mark on that document?” and in a 
chorus they all answered, ‘‘Not one!’ 

But the test of Christian character comes 
not alone in taking up the cross of suffering, 
but also in following the Master in the life of 
service and sacrifice. Let one illustration show 
the power of these simple Christians to carry 
the truth to multitudes. 

In one of our districts a man, nineteen years 
ago, when away from home, heard the Gospel 
and was converted and baptized. He then went 
back to his people and was lost sight of for 
years by our Mission. About three years ago 
we sent a preacher to the region where this man 
lived. When the people of his community 
heard it, they sent for our preacher. He went, 
found the people well nigh ready for baptism, 
and completed the preparation. They sent for 
me. I went with the District Superintendent 
and we found them with the preacher’s help 
ready and I baptized seven hundred people in 
one afternoon, the fruit of many years of work 
by one Christian layman. 

These baptisms took place on the day of the 
census taking by the Government, and, after 
the baptismal service had closed, the census 
taker, a Hindu, changed the lists, so that those 
baptized appeared in the census as Christians 
rather than Hindus, and then hastened to the 
neighboring village where he was to report, and 
boasted that he had made more Christians in 
a day than anybody else had ever done, and 
challenged any one else to show the names 
of seven hundred who had been changed from 
Hindus to Christians in a day. Altogether 
through the life and labors of this one Chris- 
tian layman there have been about one thou- 
sand baptized. In other sections of the Dis- 

39 


trict also some have been won to Christ and 
many have received their inspiration to sery- 
ice. In the “Revival Month” last year over a 
thousand laymen of the church gave nearly 
three thousand days of service with fruitful 
results. 

The Mass Movement stands also the test of 
Christian stewardship, as is evidenced in an- 
other chapter. In five districts which have about 
80,000 Christians as a result of mass move- 
ments, the people, who are poor beyond Amer- 
ican imagination, are giving one fourth of the 
funds needed to support Indian workers on 
those districts. | 

What better testimony to the influence of the 
Movement upon character could be desired than 
this incident! A cultured Hindu, a non-Chris- 
tian gentleman, while in conversation with one 
of our missionaries on a railroad train, re- 
marked, “You missionaries don’t know how 
much good you are doing my country.” And 
he added, “It has been my business for over 
- twenty years to listen to evidence in the vil- 
lages in many parts of India, and I want to 
tell you that the preaching of the mission- 
aries has brought about wonderful transforma- 
tions.” ‘Tell me what they are,’ the mission- 
ary said. “Here is one,” he replied. “Twenty- 
five years ago no Indian villager would tell the 
truth on the witness stand. One had to listen 
and make up his mind which side had the 
greatest liars and strike an average. But 
now all is changed, for a large percentage of 
non-Christians will tell the truth on the witness 
stand, and ninety-five per cent of the Christians © 
will tell the truth as witnesses.” 

Twenty-five years ago, when our Mission 
began to lead off in Mass Movement work, it 
was very seriously criticized by many influen- 
tial missionaries of other leading Missions. 
These criticisms were so severe as to be ex- 
ceedingly painful, but the change of missionary 
sentiment during the past twenty-five years as 
to the value of the Mass Movement work in 

40 


India has been so complete, that at the Con- 
ferences held in India under Dr. John R. Mott, 
in which practically all non-Catholic missions 
in India were officially represented, they in- 
dorsed the Mass Movement in the following 
series of resolutions. 

“1, The Opportunity. The widespread 
movements toward Christianity among the 
depressed classes of Hindu society and 
many of the aboriginal tribes during the 
last fifty years have recently assumed 
greater proportions and have thus opened 
a great door of opportunity for the Chris- 
tian Church. There are about fifty millions 
of these people; and the experience of the 
past has shown that in many parts of In- 
dia they are extraordinarily open to the 
message of the Gospel, forming a field 
white to the harvest. There are also many 
indications that the movements among 
these classes are spreading to the caste 
people. Indeed in some parts of India 
these movements have already begun. 

“2. The Urgency of the Crisis. Where 
such conditions exist, the claim upon the 
Missionary Societies and the Indian 
Church to gather in this vast harvest is 
urgent and imperative. It is doubtful how 
long the door will remain open. Strong 
influences are at work tending to close it. 
The Christian forces ought to press through 
with all their might while it is still open. 

‘3. Results Already Visible. One of the 
most striking features of these movements 
is the moral and spiritual results achieved. 
Even where the converts have come from 
the lowest and most degraded section of so- 
ciety, already within the short space of 
fifty years a large number of them have 
exhibited to a very remarkable degree the 
fruits of the Spirit and have by their Chris- 
tian lives won the respect of those who 
formerly despised and treated them as un- 
touchable. 

41 


“4, Significance for the Kingdom. These 
mass movements, if properly dealt with, 
will be of untold value to the cause of 
Christ in India. The work among these 
classes is dealing a powerful blow at the 
caste spirit, which in some parts of the 
Church has had so fatal an influence in 
paralyzing its missionary spirit, and also 
is a great witness to that law of God’s 
kingdom by which He chooses the weak to 
confound the strong and the things that 
are not to bring to nought the things that 
are. It is a remarkable fact that wher- 
ever in the village districts the work 
among the depressed classes has been 
most successful, there the caste people 
have been most ready to hear and accept 
the message of the Gospel. It is notice- 
able too that no part of the Church’s work 
in India excites more concern and emula- 
tion among many sections of the educated 
classes. This in itself is a strong testi- 
mony to the influence of this work as a wit- 
ness to the true nature and power of 
Christianity. 

“5. Greatness of the Task. The task be- 
fore us is gigantic. We desire to impress 
upon the Church in India and at home the 
imperative need of grappling with it in 
earnest. To gather in this harvest and to 
train and educate the converts demand a 
far greater and more widespread effort 
than has yet been made.” 


The test of the future for the Mass Move- 
ment is the test of leadership. In a recent con- 
versation with Dr. Buck, one of our first Mass 
Movement missionaries, I asked him “What is 
the final outcome to be?” Without a moment’s 
hesitation he answered, “It all depends upon 
leadership. Life comes from above, not only 
from God, but it must be in the human leaders 
of the movement. If they are Spirit-filled lead- 
ers, life will filter down through every depart- 

42 = 


ment of the movement, and it will be and con- 
tinue to be, and become increasingly a spiritual 
movement. If they are not Spirit-filled men, 
the movement will become in time a dead affair. 
Everything depends upon the Church furnish- 
ing a consecrated Spirit-filled leadership.” As 
I have meditated upon that wise missionary’s. 
matured judgment, the conviction has deepened 
that the final outcome of the Mass Movement 
will be settled by whether or not those who are 
in India, and also those in the home lands who 
are selecting and sending out new missionaries,. 
obey the last command uttered by our Lord to 
those whom He was leaving to be leaders in the 
first Christian Church, for through them He 
spoke to the leaders down through the cen- 
turies, when He said, “But ye shall receive 
power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you: 
and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, 
and in all Judea and in Samaria, and unto the 
uttermost part of the earth.” 

_What would have happened if those who were: 
to be leaders of the first Christian Church had 
disobeyed the Master’s command to tarry until 
clothed with power from on high? If there 
had been a movement at all—which I doubt— 
it would have been without spiritual life. The 
Same principle holds true concerning this Mass: 
Movement work in India. If the parting words: 
of our ascending Lord are obeyed, the Mass: 
Movement will be spiritual and Spirit-filled: 
and will sweep on to a Divinely glorious vic- 
tory. God grant that it may! 


CHAPTER V 


Tur Mass Movement’s RELATION TO OTHER: 
MIssIon PROBLEMS 


MOVEMENT on as large a scale as the 

India Mass Movement must of necessity 

raise great and difficult mission problems and: 

be open not only to dangers, but calamities, 
43 


if it is not properly guided and nourished. It 
has also most hopeful and encouraging rela- 
tionship to four tremendous problems in India, 
which, in the writer’s judgment, are vitally 
connected and can be solved more easily by 
being approached through the Mass Movement 
than in any other way. They are: the self-sup- 
port problem, the educational problem, the 
higher caste problem, and the Mohammedan 
problem. 


The Self-Support Problem 


With the problem of self-support there is as- 
sociated that of propagation. In developing 
a self-supporting church in India there are four 
stages: 


When new converts have to be supported, 

When new converts support themselves, 

When the Christians support their pastors, 

When they support their pastors and mis- 
sions. 


Mission work in India among the highest 
castes is, even yet, very largely in the first 
stage. The converts are few and they are with 
few exceptions cast off by their people at bap- 
tism, and for a time at least must be supported 
from mission funds. In the Mass Movement, 
however, in which whole communities become 
Christian, even when exceedingly poor, they con- 
tinue to support themselves after baptism just 
as they did before. Hence in a mass movement 
the first stage, that of having to support new 
converts, never comes into existence; and the 
second stage, in which new converts support 
themselves, is a part of the movement, for when 
we baptize forty thousand in a year the mission 
supports none of them. Therefore, wherever 
there is a real mass movement, the first stage 
never exists and the Mass Movement at once 
carries the work past the second stage and away 
into the third; for new converts, in our mission 
at least, begin to help to support their pastors 
often before they are baptized. Indeed, in one 
district they began months before baptism. 
tt 


Let me tell of the methods used to secure 
from these poor people as large a measure of 
self-support as is possible. In giving consid- 
eration to the financial possibilities of the de- 
velopment of self-support in India, one must 
always keep in mind the poverty of the peo- 
ple. When as a young man I was considering 
going to India, I was largely influenced in my 
decision by hearing Bishop Thoburn, then in 
his prime, tell of the many millions in India 
who existed on one coarse meal a day, or who 
went to bed without sufficient food to satisfy 
their hunger. I thought I understood because 
my heart was on fire with sympathy, but when 
_I came to live where wages for the millions are 
ten cents per day or under, I learned what a 
struggle for existence means. My daughter, 
who knows India and its poverty, has often 
said to me under intense emotion after a service 
at which we took a collection, “Papa, it is 
wicked to take a collection from these poor 
people!” Though sometimes it seems cruel, if 
not brutal, to take collections from people so 
poor and enduring such persecution, neverthe- 
less for their good we always do it, and collec- 
tions are taken everywhere and on all sorts of 
occasions. 

Our people out of this revival have prepared 
a hymn, the chorus of which is: 


Rajah Jesu Aya, 
Rajah Jesu Aya, 
Rajah Jesu Aya, 
Rajah Jesu Aya. 


King Jesus has come, 
King Jesus has come, 
King Jesus has come, 
King Jesus has come. 


There are five stanzas and in each there is but 

one thought: “to overthrow Satan,” “to forgive 

our sins,” “to cleanse our hearts,” “to give us 

comfort,” “to give us the Holy Spirit,” “Ising 

Jesus has come”; then comes a great ending 

with the thought that he is King over all kings 
45 


and Lord of all lords and will reign until all 
nations are His. Oh! if you could hear our 
happy people sing that hymn! We spread a 
sheet on the floor—often under a tree, for most 
of our village services are in the open air, well 
suited to India’s heat. Then the leaders stand 
around it and sing this resounding hymn. The ° 
people have had the “vessel of blessing” in 
their homes, a vessel in which they have been 
putting a little grain before the cooking of each 
meal. They come and empty this grain from 
their vessels upon the cloth and pile up with it 
eggs, fruit, money, pigs, chickens, and jewelry. 
I have counted in one collection as many as 
nineteen rings from the ears, fingers, and toes 
of the poor women. In South India, as one of 
these offerings was being taken, a man got up 
and ran out, but soon was seen returning lead- . 
ing his horse, the best he had, and gave him 
along with the many other things. Sometimes 
the taking of such a collection requires half 
an hour or more. I have watched the chickens 
eat the grain, but have comforted myself with 
the thought that, although there will be less 
grain, there will be more chicken. 

Most of our missionaries and ministers 
tithe, and our leading laymen who are in busi- 
ness in the cities, where we have twenty self- 
supporting churches, follow the same practice. 
This has been made possible because many of 
the children of Christians who were baptized 
from among the poor in the villages have be- 
come educated and are now in various forms 
of business and professional life, drawing good 
salaries, as Indian salaries go. In addition to 
supporting their pastors, they are carrying on 
considerable mission work. It was reported at 
our self-support meeting at our Northwest 
India Conference, that seventy-five of our 
preachers were entirely supported by our In- 
dian Christians, and twenty-six of these were 
our best paid preachers. | 

A very special campaign has also been inau- 
gurated, having in view the increasing of self- 

46 


support from the Indian Church in every pos- 
sible manner. We have been absorbed in the 
past in India in our efforts to evangelize and 
teach the thousands who are pressing into the 
Kingdom and the thousands whom we are com- 
pelled for the present to reject. A small body 
of greatly overworked missionaries in the midst 
of these vast multitudes cannot always lay 
equal emphasis on everything. But when the 
poverty of India’s lower caste people is con- 
sidered, it will be seen that we have not neg- 
lected to lay emphasis on self-support. During 
1913, when famine conditions prevailed in 
many districts, our vernacular or native Church 
raised $92,000, and our churches among the 
resident European population raised $95,000, 
or a total of $187,000. 


The Educational Problem 


It may help toward an understanding of the 
‘relation of the Mass Movement to the educa- 
tional problem to state that there are among In- 
dian Missions two distinct methods of mission 
work: one is called the educational method, and 
the other the evangelistic or mass movement 
method. The educational method, according 
to Indian missionary terminology, is largely 
carried on by educating the youth of the higher 
and wealthier classes or castes, and also by 
giving them Christian instruction during the 
years of their college training. Many good 
things can be said in favor of the educational 
method, but that is not my theme. The two 
methods dovetail into each other, and together 
are influencing India from the top and bottom 
of its social, religious, and intellectual life, and 
there is no conflict between the Missions that 
adopt them. Our Mission has largely adopted 
the evangelistic or mass movement method, 
though in a number of centers we receive into 
our institutions the sons of the wealthy as day 
scholars and their fees help to support the 
Indian teachers of our Christians, and in con- 

AT 


nection with our Lucknow College we have a 
great non-Christian hostel. 

One outstanding contrast between the two 
methods is this: the educational method uses 
its missionaries and money largely for the edu- 
cation of non-Christian students, while educa- 
tion in the mass movement or evangelistic meth- 
od is confined chiefly to the education of Chris- 
tians. First, there are little village schools for 
Christian children and the brightest Christian 
boys and girls are taken from the village schools 
and placed in our middle schools; from these 
the brightest are again promoted and graduate 
from the Isabella Thoburn and Reid Christian 
Colleges, in Lucknow. The difference between 
these two methods of missionary work, one of 
which uses its missionaries and money in edu- 
cating Christians, the other of which uses its 
missionaries and funds in the education of non- 
Christians, in my opinon is great indeed and 
makes a tremendous argument in favor of mass 
movement work in India. 

Another outstanding contrast in the outcome 
of these methods is found in the fact that up to 
the present the number of converts from high 
caste people in educational institutions has 
been among all missions disappointingly small. 
To sum up: first, the Mass Movement secures a 
vastly larger number of converts, though 
from among the common laboring people; and 
second, those upon whom the money is spent 
for education in the Mass Movement are the 
brightest among our Christian boys and girls, 
and, when they are educated, they become not 
educated non-Christians, but educated Chris- 
tians. They then take their places as Chris- 
tians among the educated Hindu and Moham- 
medan people of India, and give Christianity 
a standing among the educated of other reli- 
gions. We have already in our Indian Chris- 
tian community, brought up from the Mass 
Movement, deputy collectors, barristers, high 
court pleaders, police inspectors, and men hold- 
ing various other Government and business po- 

48 


sitions. And because of this, as stated in the 
discussion on self-support, we have over twenty 
self-supporting Indian churches, much volun- 
tary work is given by our community of edu- 
cated laymen, and in our ministry there are 
over two hundred Indian Annual Conference 
members. 

In regard to the educational possibilities, it 
may be said that, when a school is opened in a 
mohalla among the children whose ancestors 
have not been able to read, the people will learn 
as quickly as children in the home land. I sat 
down with a group of the poorest little boys, 
who were chiefly dressed with sunlight, and 
within five minutes I taught them to repeat in 
their own language the first two command- 
ments. One does not know how to appreciate 
these commandments until in the heart of.a 
heathen land that has more idols than inhab- 
itants he begins to teach the children to say: 
“ft am the Lord thy God; thou shalt have no 
other gods before me,” “Thou shalt not make 
_ unto thee a graven image; thou shalt not bow 
down thyself unto them, nor serve them.” 

In Agra there is a Government medical school 
for women. This school gathers its pupils from 
a Hindu population of about one hundred and 
fifty millions and a Mohammedan population of 
very many millions and a Christian popula- 
tion of about two hundred thousand. When I 
last visited that institution, there were present 
as pupils seventy-six Indian women. The enor- 
mous Hindu and Mohammedan population had 
furnished only two pupils, and all the other 
missions had furnished another ten. That is, 
out of the seventy-six women who were receiy- 
ing a medical education at Government ex- 
pense, and who are to be supported at Govern- 
ment expense to go out to bless India’s suffer- 
ing. womanhood, sixty-four came up through 
our Mass Movement and are members of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church. They were all 
educated in our Woman’s Foreign Missionary 
Society’s schools. 

49 


A Brahman said to me: “I cannot understand 
your religion.” “In what particular?” I re- 
plied. He said, “We have through the cen- 
turies regarded the low caste people as un- 
touchable, but missionaries mingle with them, 
start village schools among them, bring the 
brightest of them into middle and high schools, 
and before we know what is happening we find 
these outcaste people as headmasters and mis- 
tresses of the schools and we Brahmans are 
sending our children to them to be educated, 
and when we meet them we are compelled be- 
cause of their standing to greet them as our 
equals, and when they come to our houses we 
give them the place of honor. This is the rea- 
son I cannot understand your religion.” I re- 
plied, “When you get the Spirit of Christ, you 
will understand.” That is what is happening 
through the education of our Mass Movement 
children. The last are becoming the first. The 
problems are being solved. 


The High Caste Problem 


Up to the present time, where mission work 
is carried on for high caste people only, con- 
verts have been few and often have to be sup- 
ported from mission funds, for a time at least. 
In the Mass Movement there soon comes to be 
a community, and part of that community soon 
becomes educated, and the educated part of the 
community forms a society into which high 
caste converts may come and become self-sup- 
porting and have a social life. Because of such 
facts as these, in the Indian Conferences held 
by Dr. John R. Mott testimony from all parts ~ 
of India and all missions was to the effect that 
where the Mass Movement was progressing 
among the lower classes a larger per cent of 
high caste converts was being baptized than in 
parts where there was no mass movement. This 
I consider a tremendous testimony, as a mis- 
sion policy, even with reference to reaching the 
higher castes. 

50 


Further than this, the social and religious life 
of the Hindus is built on the caste system. Al- 
though the Mass Movement is among the lower 
classes, it is my confident expectation that the 
movement will extend up through the castes. 
In fact, we have in our mission already con- 
verts from over fifty castes and workers from 
all these castes. I expect that later each caste 
will become Christian on the line of a Mass 
Movement. I as confidently expect that the 
time will come when there will be ‘just such 
mass movements toward Christianity among 
the Brahmans and other high castes as there 
are now among the lower castes, and herein is 
the philosophy of the Mass Movement of the 
future among higher castes. These may begin 
at any time. There is a general expectation 
that we are on the eve of hitherto unheard of 
movements among high caste people toward 
Christianity. 


The Mohammedan Problem 


It should never be forgotten at this time, 
when throughout Christendom great efforts are 
being put forth for the conversion of the Mo- 
hammedan world, that there are sixty-two mil- 
lion Mohammedans in India, several millions 
more than in any other country. We are, 
through the Mass Movement having converts 
from among them in increasing numbers. We 
have in our Mission in India from Mohammed- 
anism a thousand converts and about a hun- 
dred workers. 

There are two methods by which the con- 
version of Mohammedans in India can be under- 
taken: one, a direct mission to Mohammedans, 
or what might be called direct attack upon 
Mohammedanism, and such missions should be 
encouraged and supported; the other, the line 
of mass movements which will attack Moham- 
medanism indirectly; that is, by getting con- 
verts and Christian workers, as reported above, 
from among Mohammedans as they hear the 
Gospel when it is preached to the masses. Then, 

‘61 


when a Christian community grows up in In- 
dia to live a genuinely spiritual Christian life, 
instead of having a few missionaries attacking 
Mohammedanism directly, there will come to 
be millions of Christians living and working 
among the Mohammedan people and forming a 
Christian community into which converts can 
come. The reason Mohammedanism has had 
converts from among the lower castes of Hin- 
duism in India in large numbers is because 
there are millions of Mohammedans at work in 
India. The way that Christian missions will 
best counteract this movement is by getting 
millions of people from among the low caste 
Hindus, who otherwise will become Moham- 
medans, to become Christians, and then to have 
those millions that have become Christians be- 
come Christian missionaries in the viilages to 
the Mohammedans about them. Thus it seems 
to the writer that the most successful method 
of preventing an enormous increase of Moham- 
medanism in India, and of reaching Moham- 
medans that are in India, is through the Mass 
Movement to build up a Christian Church that 
will live Christianity and do Christian work 
among’ the millions of Mohammedans, and in 
that way Mohammedanism will be more 
quickly evangelized than by any other method 
known to this observer of Indian movements. 


CHAPTER VI 
THe PROBLEM OF THE MOVEMENT 


HE Mass Movement Commission in India 

has sent out a statement which clearly 

sets forth the urgency of the crisis in the form 
of a summary of the situation: 


Baptized by our Church in India last 


VOAT \ sire. USabee’, alone Stas. ae os PRI te 35,000 
Turned away by our Church in India last 

WOOT he aA brake ee a creel See Ff et em 40,000 
Waiting inquirers who have waited in 

WOAY, Sse wate ba ey Sleie s Fhe eee eae 150,000 


People who are beginning now to turn 


PEO SOR TISC oh ss citc sa 6a she's 500,000 to 1,000,000 
People in the caste in which the Move- 

RICE TS LOW Oli ce oe we re es eins ees 11,000,000 
Total number of the community among 

whom the Movement is on.......... 50,000,000 


To illustrate the very grave seriousness of 
keeping these people waiting, I will relate an- 
other experience of our Mission in India, and 
make the contrast. 

Before 1900, within the bounds of one of our 
Conferences, a movement began among a caste 
numbering about forty thousand. Our mission- _ 
aries had baptized about half of the community 
and all the rest of that caste was getting ready 
to become Christian when the conservative ele- 
ment in our Mission raised the cry that we were 
baptizing more people than we could properly 
educate and train. The conservative element 
prevailed, the cry was heard, and baptisms were 
stopped. Then the twenty thousand who were 
refused baptism became angry and divided the 
community, and the rejected members of the 
community have ever since been our enemies. 

It often happened that the owner of the vil- 
lage idol was among those who had not been 
baptized. He would therefore maintain his 
right as a non-Christian to retain his idol and 
to continue idol worship, and in such cases for 
all the intervening twenty years or more our 
Christians have been compelled to tolerate idol- 
atrous worship in their villages. Further, it 
almost always was the case that some of the 
children of those who had been refused baptism 
were betrothed to the children of those who had 
been baptized. When the wedding time ap- 
proached, there would be the struggle as to 
whether the wedding would be performed by 
heathen or Christian rites, and whether the 
newly married pair would identify themselves 
with the Christian or the non-Christian part of 
the community. 

It now seems perfectly clear that we could 
have much more easily trained and lifted the 

53 


whole community than half of it. Many of our 
missionaries consider the refusing to baptize 
that whole community the greatest mistake our 
Mission has made in our Indian experience. 

Note with care the contrasts between that sit- 
uation and the present one. . 

Then there were only twenty thousand re- 
jected: now we are holding back one hundred 
and fifty thousand. 

Then there was only an affected community 
of forty thousand: now the people of the class 
which we are holding back number over one 
million residing right in the districts involved, 
and in all India eleven million. Should these 
turn against us, the Mass Movement will be de- 
ferred indefinitely... How much one would like 
to know, as he carries the responsibility of de- 
ciding how fast to baptize, what Jesus or Paul 
would do in the midst of the Indian caste sys- - 
tem ! 

To illustrate the risks which we run, and to 
help the reader to see our problem, may I relate 
one of our experiences? The report came to the 
missionaries that in a certain village a woman 
who had been baptized was worshiping idols. 
A lady missionary went to see her and asked 
if it was true that as a Christian she had wor- 
shiped idols. The poor woman did not deny 
but frankly acknowledged that she had. Then 
the missionary asked “Why did you do it?” 
The woman replied, “When you came and 
preached Jesus and the forgiveness of sins and 
the communion of the Holy Spirit and heaven 
at last, it all seemed so wonderful and we were 
all so happy that we became Christians. Then 
you went away and left no one to teach us. My 
dear little girl got smallpox and I tried every 
way I could to learn what Christian mothers 
did when their little children had smallpox, but 
I could not learn. I loved my little girl like 
any other mother and I did not want her to die 
and I did not know what else to do, so I got out 
the smallpox god. I killed the hen, offered 
blood, and burned incense.” Who was to blame 

54 


—that poor woman or our great Church which 
left her without a guide or teacher? 

That you may better understand the emer- 
gency, suppose yourself now in India as Bishop 
and responsible for the leadership of this Move- 
ment, surrounded by over two hundred million 
Hindus, who through a number of active organ- 
izations are exerting themselves to keep this 
waiting one hundred and fifty thousand from | 
becoming Christians. They are trying to stop 
the whole Movement and are using two power- 
ful weapons: one, intense persecution if they 
become Christians; the other, the offer to lift - 
them into caste privileges if they remain in 
Hinduism. Add to this the fact that millions 
of Mohammedans, to get them into their fold, 
are using the enthusiasm and fanaticism that 
have caused Mohammedanism to conquer and 
spread through the centuries. Add to these the 
other fact that over against the thousands of 
Hindus and Mohammedans who are now wak- 
ing to the urgency of the situation, all the Chris- 
tians in India are but a little company. 

What would YOU do? Would you cry for 
help? Would you go on and baptize unlimited 
numbers whom you could not train and run the 
risk of later having all your Christians swept 
off into Mohammedanism, as happened in 
North Africa in the early Middle Ages? Our 
missionaries and Indian ministers are working 
to the limit of their strength. I was walking 
with one of our Indian ministers, a representa- 
tive of a noble band, and, without being con- 
scious that he was stating anything remarkable, 
he said, “Last month in trying to teach and help 
our Christians I walked over five hundred miles 
and preached on an average of three times a 
day.” That month was the hottest in the year.* 


*An automobile would enable about a dozen of our District Super- 
intendents in India to double their efficiency aud in several instances 
to quadruple their work. One of them, Rev. Benson Baker, of Mee- 
rut, can speak for himself and the rest. He has supervision over 
25,000 Christians. After describing a long, hard trip on his bicycle, 
he writes: ‘‘The meaning of it all is this—it just seems that I ought 
to have a motor-car of some kind. I am trying*to do extensive work 
and get to many points of the district. It just seems that I spend all 
my time getting some place. I often start off early in the morning 
and do not get back until night, and nothing to eat allday. It does 


55 


Our established work is doing much to supply 
us with laborers for the Mass Movement. But 
we cannot wisely transfer its staff and re- 
sources to a new type of work and leave its 
own tasks undone. We had under our care 
when our last statistics were gathered, a Chris- 
tian community of nearly three hundred and 
twenty thousand. We have forty congrega- 
tions for Europeans and Anglo-Indians resi- 
dent in India, many of them self-supporting and 
all contributing toward Mission expenses. We 
have ten educational institutions for the chil- 
dren of this community and they are largely 
self-supporting and have furnished some of our 
most successful missionaries and helpers. On 
a school day in our Mission alone the doors of 
one thousand six hundred and thirty schools of 
all grades, including the colleges, swing open 
to over forty-four thousand of Southern Asia’s 
boys and girls. From the earliest beginnings 
our Church in India has made an outstanding 
specialty of Sunday Schools and our entrance 
into hundreds of new communities has been by 
this means. In our enthusiasm we have some- 
times in the past opened more Sunday Schools 
than we could permanently maintain. At pres- 
ent to the number of over four thousand three 
hundred they welcome every week over one hun- 
dred and fifty thousand of India’s youth. Be- 
fore the Epworth League was organized in 
America we had the Oxford League for our 
young people in India and as soon as the Ep- 
worth League was organized in America it was 
introduced into India. We have over twenty- 
four thousand Epworth Leaguers. The effi- 
ciency of both our Sunday Schools and our Ep- 
worth Leagues will be very greatly increased 
if it is possible for us to open the one hundred 


not seem to me to be a good investment. The pain in my back is 
becoming rather insistent. . . . But more than this is the fact 
that Iam not able to reach the places I ought to reach, and when I 
do get there I am so worn out that I am surely not at my best.” 
Certainly no business firm would have an agent who had spent years 
in training exhaust his strength after this fashion in tropical India. 
At its meeting in May, 1915, the Board of Managers discussed at 
length the advantage the automobile would be in several of its mission 
fields, including India, and encouraged its secretaries to take means 
to secure them. 


56 


and sixty day schools asked for by the Mass 
Movement Commission. 

We must not let this work siacken, for these 
are the institutions of a developed church nec- 
essary to the education of Mass Movement lead- 
ers and to the life of the great Indian Church of 
the future. 

It is indeed an emergency. The Board of 

Foreign Missions has created in cooperation 
with the Bishops a Mass Movement Commission 
to study the situation and to make plans to 
meet it. The Commission finds that there are 
nine districts—Bulandshahr, Delhi, Meerut, 
Muttra, Punjab, Roorkee, Tirhoot, Vikarabad, 
and Raichur-Gulbarga—in which tbe Mass 
Movement prevails in greater or less intensity. 
It states that on these nine districts over one 
hundred and fifty thousand people “are plead- 
ing for the Gospel, but because of the lack of 
means to train workers to teach these multi- 
tudes, the doors remain shut.” 
-.Methodism cannot remain Methodism unless 
it opens the door of hope to these inquirers, nor 
can it forget its duty to the hundreds of thou- 
sands, darkened of mind and hungry of soul, 
who stand behind these. 

The report of the Commission also points out 
“that more than one hundred thousand illit- 
erate people are being added to our rural Chris- 
tian community each quadrennium, and we need 
to establish without the loss of time a system 
of village schools adequate to meet this emer- 
gency—the greatest our Mission has ever had 
to face in this land.” 

Close observers of the opportunities presented 
in this extraordinary movement urge that, for 
a few years, the addition to current resources 
of at least one hundred thousand dollars a year 
should be secured. While earnestly desiring 
this larger sum, the Commission recommends, 
as practical proposals to meet the immediate 
situation, the following plans: 

(1) A woman missionary evangelist in each 
of the nine Districts named by the Commission. 

57 


(2) One additional male missionary for each 
of the following Districts: Tirhoot, Delhi, the 
Punjab, Bulandshahr, and Vikarabad. 

(3) One or more competent Indian school 
inspectors for the educational work of Districts 
in the Mass Movement area. 

(4) Central training schools for the various 
language areas affected by the Movement. 
Seven are required, at $1,000 a year. 

(5) A District training class in each of the 
Districts, at $400 each, providing for about ten 
students in each. 

(6) The establishment of village schools, at 
$100 each a year, to the number of 160 for the 
immediate primary education of about 16,000 
children. 

This listing of the immediate needs would 
therefore be as follows: 


Besides the missionaries asked for 


7 Training School Inspectors, $300 each.... $2,100 
7 Training Schools, at $1,000 each.......... 7,000 
7 District Summer Schools, at $400 each.... 2,800 
160: Schools; at’$100!edels Gye eee eee 16,000 

BPOtal ses iehte Soin esd niu heres ee ole eee $27,900 


It is estimated that from local sources in 
India there could be received $7,900, leaving a 
balance to be found of $20,000 a year. In addi- 
tion to the above the Woman’s Foreign Mis- 
sionary Society has promised from the thank 
offering of 1916 the sum of $5,000. 

The above financial statement in no sense in- 
dicates the total need. It is a careful estimate 
to show what will barely relieve the present 
situation. With the gains in membership, it is 
very evident that the demands for property 
and equipment will greatly increase. The ad- 
ditional missionary force required would at 
once lift this modest estimate to $50,000 a year. 

By our necessities the missionaries in India 
have accustomed themselves to think of the 
minimum, and we have frankly indicated an 
amount which will merely serve as a foundation 

58 


and which must be augmented from year to 
year, both in gifts from America and in the 
gifts from the church in India. All that we are 
attempting is to indicate a sum that if raised 
annually and gradually increased will enable 
our Indian forces to measure up to the imme- 
diate demands of the situation created by the 
Mass Movement. 


CHAPTER VII 
How CANn THE CHURCH COOPERATE? 


4 OW can we best help?” is the question 
of many an earnest heart. I always 
feel when at home that undue credit is being 
given to the missionaries for the work of For- 
eign Missions. The work is not theirs. They 
are but the servants of Jesus Christ and the 
Church—but the hands, feet, tongue, and finger 
tips by which the Church is touching the non- 
Christian nations. The missionary could not 
even reach the foreign field, much less live and 
work there, if the home church did not pay the 
bills. Concerning the home church and the mis- 
sionary the truth is “We are workers together,” 
and our inspiration and hope are in the fact 
that we can complete the quotation—“with 
God.” In the day of victory there will be no. 
difference between those who went down to 
the battle and those who tarried by the stuff. 

1. Prayer First, that is our Indian slogan— 

prayer first in everything. You can best co- 
operate by prayer. So often good people hon- 
estly say to me, “Oh, how I wish I had money!” 
with an implied inference that because they 
have not money they are useless and out of the 
game. “There is no one to intercede.” 

If you cannot give, you can pray until you 
can unlock Divine forces infinitely greater than 
the power of finance. “Ask and I will do” is 
Christ’s first law in the spiritual realm. If you 
can give and are not giving, pray until the 
blessed Spirit shall enable you to bring in the 

59 


“tithes and offerings’”—that God may open the 
windows of heaven and pour out blessings for 
all. Prayer first! 

2. Keep up and increase the annual income 
of all four of the Home and Foreign Missionary 
organizations of the Church. They are the 
foundation, backbone, heart, and life of all mis- 
Sionary operations. Foreign missionaries do 
not pray for the foreign societies only. They 
pray, “Ob, God, save America, that America 
may do her part in saving the world.” Indian 
missionaries realize that India is one of the 
great mission fields of our Church, but only one, 
and that the Mass Movement is one phase of 
our Indian work, but only one. I have just 
visited China, Korea, and Japan, and have rec- 
ognized the great opportunities and the mar- 
velous work which God is doing through our 
missionaries in these lands. And there are our 
other great fields: Africa, Europe, Malaysia, 
the Philippines, and South America—all de- 
pendent, in common with India, on the regular 
annual income of the Board of Foreign Mis- 
sions and the Woman’s Foreign Missionary So- 
ciety. To help all missions, increase the income 
of all four of our missionary societies. 

3. But the Mass Movement is an emergency— 
a great open door which Christ calls us to enter. 
Make it an emergency in your praying and in 
your giving. To meet it the regular income of 
the Missions is utterly inadequate. 

In India, as in Galilee, but in vaster numbers, 
the people are thronging to the Christ. “When 
he saw the multitudes, he was moved with com- 
passion for them, because they were as sheep 
not having a shepherd.” Conscious of their 
utter inadequacy to meet the need, the disciples 
could but urge, “Send the multitudes away.” 
To them came the Master’s answer, “Give ye 
them to eat.” 

Just before I left India, fifteen hundred 
Chaudhries, and other leaders belonging to the 
Chamar caste, in which the Mass Movement is 
now on in force, came together and remained 

60 


together for three days and discussed the fol- 
lowing questions: 

1. Shall we remain as we are? 

2. Shall we become Mohammedans and re- 
ceive social recognition ? 

3. Shall we accept the offer of the Hindus, 
i. e., to higher caste privileges if we refuse to 
become Christians? 

4. Shall we become Christians and suffer 
persecutions? 

At the close of the three days’ discussion 
they sent word to our missionary that 
they had unanimously voted to become Chris- 
tians and that they represented fifteen thou- 
sand who were all ready. Some time before 
that, three thousand eight hundred men spent 
a whole night in a similar discussion—and they 
represented a much larger number—and they 
also asked for baptism. Our missionaries and 
Indian ministers are greatly overworked and 
we have not the funds to train others in ade- 
quate numbers to instruct and shepherd these 
vast multitudes. And so we were compelled to 
say to these people, “You must wait. We can- 
not receive you now.” Try to fancy Methodism 
in the United States saying to one hundred 
and fifty thousand people knocking at her 
doors, “Wait. We cannot receive you.” If that 
could not happen in America, should we be com- 
pelled to make it happen in India? 

A recent letter from a District Superin- 
tendent of the Conference in which the majority 
of these waiting thousands live will explain why 
the missionaries had to say, “We cannot receive 
you now. Wait.” 

“T find that my accounts are running behind 
at the rate of five hundred rupees ($160.00) per 
month. For February I never received a penny 
of special gifts and for March only enough to 
pay half my bills. There is nothing to do but 
to dismiss men. Yesterday I sent notices to 
twelve men that they will be cut off. Even this 
will not meet the conditions. To-day I am send- 
ing fifteen boys away from my school. The only 

61 


thing to do is to obey the orders of the Finance 
Committee, ‘No District Superintendent is to 
run his District into debt.’ The knife has been 
plunged into the vitals of my District and its 
life-blood is flowing out. This, too, when we 
are on the eve of a great mass movement. Two 
of our best men tell me that there are hundreds 
waiting to be baptized. Now I can nerve myself 
to tell young men who have passed out of the 
Theological School and the various Mission 
schools and offered themselves to the Church for 
the Master’s service, to step aside and seek em- 
ployment elsewhere, but, when it comes to say- 
ing ‘jao’ (go) to men and women who have given 
their lives to the cause and served the Church 
twenty-five and thirty years, every fiber in my 
nervous system recoils.” 

Notwithstanding such heartbreaking disap- 
pointment from the human side, should you | 
nevertheless ask, “Do you really believe that the 
mighty Indian Empire will ever be evangel- 
ized?” I would answer, “The Son of God has 
begun to build His Kingdom in the Indian Eim- 
pire. Apply reverently to Himself His own 
words about the man who was mocked because 
he began to build, but was not able to finish. 
Shall the enemies of the Cross in derision say, 
‘Christ, the Son of God, began to build His 
Kingdom in the Indian Empire, but was not 
able to finish’? Nay, verily, He will build it. 
‘He is able’ and has given us the day of oppor- 
tunity.” Shall we miss our opportunity? Shall 
India have to wait, because we have failed, until 
God has raised up other followers to do His 
bidding? “Go up and possess the land.” 


“The awakening millions wait 
The light whose dawning 
Maketh all things new. 
Christ also waits, 

But men are late. 
Have we done what we could? 
Have I? Have you?” 


62 


HOW CHURCHES, SUNDAY SCHOOLS, 
CLASSES AND INDIVIDUALS MAY HELP 
THE MASS MOVEMENT 


1. Join “Missionary Evangelism Prayer 
League” of the Board of Foreign Missions. 
(Sign blank on opposite page. ) 


2. Become a member of the Mass Movement 
Relief Brigade by the payment of $1 or more 
a month for the development of the work in the 
Mass Movement areas. 


o. Take the support of a native preacher to 
cost $4.00, $5.00 or $6.00 per month. 


4. Support a Chaudhri and family (village 
mayor) in a school where they will learn to 
read the Bible in one year and return to teach 
and evangelize the village without salary. One 
year in school for the family is only $40.00 (the 
Chaudhri $20.00 and his wife and family 
$20.00). 

5. Support a boy in Boarding school where he 
_ 18 preparing to teach or preach. Food, clothing 
and education is only $20.00 per year. 

6. Take any one of the items below as taken 
from list of immediate needs on page 58. 


7 Training School Inspectors, $300 each..... $2,100 
7 Training Schools, at $1,000 each.......... 7,000 
7 District Summer Schools, at $400 each.... 2,800 
ESC ITOOIS “hE. et CACY. rai < sic o'oaha a Srv cece 0 oss 16,000 


7. Send a missionary from America (man or 
woman) who will spend his or her time in evan- 
‘gelistic work. You may have his or her photo- 
graph and correspond with the missionary. 


8. If not able to take the support of any of 
these specific needs, send cash or pledge for 
some amount to be used to the best advantage 
for urgent needs. 


Note: All who take the support of a boy, 
Chaudhri or preacher will receive his picture 
if we can obtain same. We wiil also endeavor 
to let the donor hear from the one or the work 
supported. 

63 


Note 2: Fill out pledges below and mail to 
James M. Taylor, Secy., Department Mission- 
ary Evangelism, Board of Foreign Missions, 
150 Fifth Avenue, New York City. 


BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS 
METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH 
150 Fifth Avenue, New York City. 


InpiA Mass MoveMrent PLEDGE 


Desiring to help relieve the special needs on 


the. field IT promise $. 2..).'.*) .. coc) ee 


BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS 
METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH 
150 Fifth Avenue, New York City. 


MISSIONARY EVANGELISM PRAYER LEAGUE 


Desiring to become a member of the Mission- 
ary Evangelism Prayer League of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, I promise to pray daily for 
missions and especially for special needs of 
which I may be notified. 


Correspondence should be addressed to Board 
of Foreign Missions of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, 150 Fifth Avenue, New York City, in 
order that members may be kept in touch with 
the Prayer League’s special topic for prayer. 


64 


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ns 


Be 
oaahs ke 
tae 


Wat 


BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIO¥S 


He 
We 
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